The only challenge with using these scraps is that the fabrics that work best for her business are large and bold designs. The fabrics that work best for quilting, however, are tone-on-tone and monocromatic prints. I am not complaining at all, I am just saying that this is a challenge that I LOVE to overcome! Here are the four quilts I made, using a combination of her scraps and mine.

Before I get into these quilts, let me describe to you my scrap sorting process.

I consider a scrap to be anything of an odd shape (cut at an angle or parts used for applique) or smaller than a fat quarter. I keep them in a little bin and wait until I am ready to cut them down.

I first take a scrap and cut it into 6 or 5 inch squares.

If a scrap is not big enough for larger squares, I cut out smaller 2.5 inch squares.

I then look at the left overs from this cutting. If it is thinner than 1 inch, then I just toss it. If it is thicker than one inch, I sort it into tiny scraps or strings. Tiny scraps are those that are thicker than 1 inch, thinner than 2.5 inches, and 6 inches long or shorter. These scraps are PERFECT for a scrap box quilt. Anything smaller than that, I toss.

If it is about 1 inch, thinner than 2.5 inches and longer than 6 inches, then I consider that to be a string. I save my strings separately for string quilts. A lot of my strings come from the extra backing of a quilt that I cut off after quilting, so sometimes I have a lot of strings of the same fabric.

I also save the selvages, which is the first thing I cut off when I have new fabric.

So with this large print scraps, I have made a variety of baby quilts.

First, a boy quilt made with the 5 inch scraps (4.5 inch finished). I backed this quilt with a blue minky (not shown) and quilted it with a straight line stitch echoing the seams.

Then, I made a girl quilt made with 5 inch scraps. This one turned out to be a little TOO busy, so I tried to calm it down with a tone-on-tone pink panel on top.

I backed this quilt with minky.

The next quilt uses 2.5 inch squares that I could separate by color. I made nine patch blocks with scraps of yellow, pink, red, white with red, green, mint green, and blue.

Then, I arranged them in a rainbow from corner to corner, using 2 inch white strips to separate the blocks (1.5 inch final).

I quilted this quilt with a loopy flower design. I used minky for the back again.

This last quilt uses 2.5 inch squares made mostly from my friend’s scraps. They were all scraps of fabrics with large designs, and I found that they actually made a pretty cool panel. To have a quilt completely made from this fabric would be extremely busy, but having it act like a panel like this calms it down.

I also backed this with the same minky. I am falling in love with using minky for baby quilts.

For the binding for these quilts, I have chosen to machine bind the binding on both sides. This is because I don’t know if I would want to hand stitch a binding to a minky backing. I am happy to report that I am getting better at a machine binding, but I still love the look of hand binding!

These are my quilts 119-122, all using either 2.5 inch scraps or 5 inch squares. I still have not used my 6 inch squares, but when I do, I will most likely make a lot of half square triangles for more baby quilts. I know that they will all soon have homes, as a lot of new babies are being born in my neighborhood.

Super super cute. I love the little boy one it is adorable. I think you should hold onto and maybe I can buy it off of you when we have a baby boy. 🙂 I love the quilt stitches in them. AMAZING. They little flower in the third one, super cute.

Super baby quilts! It is so satisfying using the scraps. I like your ideas for cutting up scraps. How lucky are you getting all those offcuts. It must be exciting when you get them to see what there is. Like opening a Christmas present.

You do a lovely job making your baby quilts. The minky sure sets it off, and would be so cozy. I differ with you on the prints being too busy, I think they look good, unique. Anything goes these days, when my 4 babies were little, it was just pink, blue, yellow or green. The choice these days is amazing. I am sure any mom would be proud to get your quilts.

A blog about a quilter's progression, from the first quilt to the last.